Access to lets: a future for rent deposit schemes in Scotland

The private rented sector plays a small but important role in the provision of accommodation for homeless people on low incomes. It has therefore traditionally played an important part in the prevention of homelessness.

Accessing to the private rented sector is difficult for some people because of the need for rent deposits and speedy access to housing benefit. Rent deposit schemes are therefore about tackling one of the causes of homelessness the inability to quickly access accommodation in the private sector. This review therefore considers the Homelessness Task Force's recommendation that rent deposit schemes should be a preventative tool in the campaign to end homelessness.

In this review, Shelter argues that there is a need to refocus attention on the important role that the private sector plays as tenure of the last resort for many homeless and low-income people. This attention must in particular consider the way in which this sector can be harnessed by local authorities, many of whom do not have enough temporary accommodation to meet the new temporary accommodation duties for non-priority need homeless people contained within the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001.

Local authorities and the Scottish Executive need to further identify ways in which some of the difficulties that low-income people face in accessing this sector can be removed. These problems range from housing benefit restrictions for single people to not having the funds to pay for a deposit at the start of a tenancy.

This paper argues that Scotland's 17 existing experiments with rent deposit schemes have been successful in overcoming some of the barriers people face when accessing this sector. We therefore suggest that existing schemes should be better resourced and new schemes should be developed as part of local authority homelessness strategies.